George W. Oakes (1909-1965)

He was born in Philadelphia and was a nephew of Adolph Ochs, owner of The New York Times, and brother of John B. Oakes, creator of the contemporary "Op-Ed" page. He studied at the Collegiate School in New York City before graduating in history from Princeton where he was remembered as, "an outstanding orator and debater" and was President of the Whig-Clio, Princeton's political, literary, and debating society. After Princeton, he continued his studies in England at The Queen's College, Oxford (B.A., M.A.). Returning to the States, he began his career with the family-owned Chattanooga Times, writing the first feature article on the Tennessee Valley Authority. He spent a year there before moving to The New York Times where he first worked in the advertising department before becoming one of its writers from 1934.

Leaving his job with The New York Times in 1942, he enlisted with the U.S. Army and after serving in both field and military intelligence, he was discharged with the rank of Captain in 1946. Joining the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) he worked in London for two-and-a-half years during which time he founded a weekly newspaper, The American Outlook, for which he later became Washington editor/correspondent. From 1957, he was a regular contributor to the Washington Sunday Star, specializing in cultural and educational affairs, and from the 1960s he began to specialize in travel writing. He authored two travel books: Turn Right at the Fountain (1963) and Turn Left at the Pub (published posthumously by his daughter in 1968). The former was termed by critics as, "the most informatively different and eminently practical travel book to be published."

In 1939, just before the start of World War II, he was married to Joanna, daughter of Col. Ernest Albert Rose C.B.E. of London & Churt, Surrey, and they had two children. Tragically, he was killed with his wife and son in a car crash returning home from a ski trip in Vermont and after a visit to Dartmouth College where his son had hoped to start. His daughter was then taken under the wing of his brother, John B. Oakes' family.